Stillness and Illusion

These two terms may seem a little unrelated but stillness itself contains illusion in it's own definiton after all. As i've mentioned before, stillness can be defined as not the absence of motion but a state of paralysation caused by velocity. Based on that definition, we can say that stillness does not exist and that it's actually a series of precise and powerful movements which creates the illusion of motionless. It's more or less a mind trick that effects our perception upon daily moments. But the thing is, our perception is effected by many other things as well, such as our memory and emotions. Our perception is our reality and it's a highly subjective one. As a conclusion, i believe i can say that we live in our minds and everything we perceive is an illusion.

 'Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.' - Douglas Adams

Perception is the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment and is shaped by learning, memory, expectation and attention. And, the simple definiton of illusion is 'not perceiving things as they really are'. So, i think i can say that illusion is a distorted form of perception where by one sees things not as they truly are. Perception itself is a illusory device, because we never perceive anything as it actually is. According to that definition, it's inevitable to say thay how we view reality will always be in distortion, such as with the effects of pyschological illusions that only exist to the perceiver.

Conclusively, to me, stillness, illusion and perception are all pieces of the same composition. And when we observe a painting, we perceive the reality of the artist in that work of art. But the way we perceive that particular perception in that artistic work is also open to distortion. That to me, creates an effect of illusion in an other illusion. The way we appreciate and get affected by it consists on our own visual perception. Following Hermann von Helmholtz, who described visual perceptions as unconscious inferences from sensory data and knowledge derived from the past, perceptions are regarded as psychological projections into external space and accepted as our most immediate reality.